
2^.6^^<t<==^C/ ff 




(^/i^.J^lx 



ci''yyJ^ 




Book . f ^- 



//K«-e.c3^-^^^^ '-"— ^ -y ^^ 




K^- 



STATE OF THE TJ:Nri05<^"',^ uT^ 

Speech of Hon. Sidney Edgerton, 

OF OHIO, 

Delivered in the House of Beirresentatives, January 31, 1861. 



Tlie House having under consideration the report from the select committee of thirty-three — 

Mr. EDGERTON said : 

Mr. Speaker : In times like the present, when prejudice and passion have 
seized the minds of men ; when momentous questions are to be settled aifecting, 
not only the present, but reaching far into the limitless future : when, in short, a 
great nation is in the very throes and convulsions of revolution, it behoves us to 
act with calmness, to look about iis, and see what is the disturbing element ; 
and when found, apply to it the remedy which wisdom and patriotism may dic- 
tate. A stranger to our Government and its history would be at a loss to find 
an adequate explanation for the wonderful excitement and headlong fury of the 
hour. He would see a country prosperous, abounding in material wealth; a 
Government resti-ained, mild, and paternal. But to one conversant with our 
history, that disturber of our peace is well known ; it is the fell-spirit of slavery. 
For years it has controlled this Government, and, like a virus, it has infused it- 
self into the life-blood of the nation ; and now, grown strong under this Gov- 
ernment, it demands the perpetuity of its power or the overthrow of Govern- 
ment itself. 

We hear much said on this floor about southern rights and southern wrongs. 
It would raise a smile of derision should we talk about eastern rights or west- 
ern rights, as rights independent of and paramount to our rights as American 
citizens. But what are these wrongs of which the South complain, of which we 
hear so much in vague generalities ? Is it the jelection of Lincoln ? That we 
had an unquestionable constitutional right to do, and for it we owe no apology ; 
and I, for one, shall make none. But he differs with you on the subject of 
slavery. That he has a right to do ; and a majority of the people and of the 
civilized world are with him, and opposed to you. If it has come to this, that a 
minority can dictate what shall be the peculiar views of a presidential candidate 
on the subject of slavery or any other subject, then we are slaves ; and if we 
submit to such dictation, we ought to be slaves. It is said — and this I believe 
is the chief cause of complaint — that slaveholders are not permitted to go into 
the common territory with their slaves. Our slaves are our property, you say, 
and we have or should have the same right to take them into the territory and 
hold them there, as you of the North to take your cattle and other property. 
If it be true that slaves are property as cattle are property, then you have the 
right, and should be protected in that right. How, then are slaves property ? 
Not by virtue of any natural law. 

In that great primal law of Jehovah which gave man dominion over the fowls 
of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, I find no provision for 
slavery. By the common law — that law which is everywhere acknowledged. 



2 .^^"^ ^ 

and which grows out of the fitness of things — slaves are not property. Nearly 
all civilized nations deny that man can hold property in man ; but my right to 
my horse is everywhere admitted. This right was not created by law ; it existed 
before constitutions and laws, and cannot be impaired by them. If, then, your 
slaves are property, the same as other property in this Government, they must 
be made so by the Constitution of the United States. And, pray, where in that 
instrument do you find the article or section which ordains and establishes 
slavery ; which makes one man the property of another "? And it must be there 
in express terms, if at all ; for such a relation cannot be created by inference 
or implication ; and if you find it there, I am surprised at the excessive modesty 
which demands so little. You are entitled to all you ask, and far more. As 
was well said by my able colleague, [Mr. Stanton,] in his unanswerable argu- 
ment the other day, " you have the right to take your slaves into the States and 
hold them there" by virtue of the supreme law, " anything in the constitution 
or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." And more than this : 
if slaves are property by the Constitution, you have the right to take your slaves 
upon the high seas, and trade and trafiic in them there, and it is the duty of 
Government to protect you in that right. And yet more : you have the right 
to take your slaves into any part of the world, and hold them there ; and your 
Government must protect you in that right. '' The property of an individual," 
says Vattel, " does not cease to belong to him on account of his being in a for- 
eign country ; and it is still a part of the totality of the wealth of his nation. 
The pretensions which the lord of the territory might form, in respect to the 
wealth of a foreigner, would be, then, equally contrary to the rights of the pro- 
prietor, and to those of the nation to which he belonged." 

But there is nothing of the kind in the Constitution. It sedulously guards 
even against such a suspicion ; and whenever it speaks of slaves, it speaks of 
them as persons, not as things. Your slaves must be property, then, (if indeed 
they are property at all,) by virtue of some local State legislation. And will 
gentlemen tell me by what process slavery, the creature of local law, is made na- 
tional ? It is a well-established proposition in law, that property made so by 
local legislation, is only property while within the local jurisdiction. The mo- 
ment you take your slave beyond the borders of your State, upon free territory, 
that moment the fictitious and unnatural relationship created by your local law 
ceases, and your slave stands before you no longer a thing, but a man like your- 
self. When you ask us to admit the monstrous proposition that slavery is na- 
tional, you ask us to admit what your own southern courts have again and again 
denied ; what a few years ago no man was insane enough to claim. Here are 
some of- the decisions of your own courts, which I submit to your considera- 
tion. 

The court of appeals of Kentucky, in the case of Kankin vs. Lydia, says : 

"Slavery is sanctioned by the laws of this State, and the right to hold them un- 
der our municipal regulations is unquestionable. But we view this as a rigtit exist- 
ing by positive law of a municipal character, without foundation in the laws of na- 
ture, or the unwritten and common law." — 2 Marshall's Reports, p. 476. 

The same principle is also affirmed in the case of Tom Davis vs. Tingle et al., 
(8 B. Monroe, p. 545.) 

In the case of Lunsford vs. Coquilla, the supreme court of Louisiana declares 
that — 

" The relation of owner and slave is— in the States of this Union in which it has 
a legal existence — a creature of municipal law." — 2 Blartin, p. 402. 

The supreme court of Mississippi, in the case of Harry vs. Decker, uses this 
very emphatic language : 



" Slavery is condemned by reason and the laws of nature ; it exists and can only 
exist through municipal regulations." — Walker^s Mississippi Reports, p. 42. 

Also, page S3, State of Mississippi vs. Jones, the court says : 

" The rit^ht of the master exists, not by the force of the la\v of nature or of nations, 
but by virtue only of VaQ positive law of ttie State." 

The Supreme Court of the United States, in the renowned Prigg case, de- 
cides the same point. It says : 

" The state of slavery is deemed to be a mere municipal regulation, founded upon 
and limited to the range of territorial laws." — IG Pf^e?-5, 439. 

Here, then, we find southern courts — courts of now seceding States — sustain- 
ing the very position which we now take, and for which we are denounced as 
sectional, and as enemies to the South. 

The gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Millson,] whose candor and ability al- 
ways command the attention of this House, advanced a new, and, as I think, a 
most untenable argument, in behalf of the right of the master to take his slave 
into the Territory. He says : 

"A slave is a man. He is a responsible man ; responsible to our laws, reponsible 
to God. He is a person ; a person held to service ; and it is because he is a person, 
that theposition of the South before this Congress and in the Constitution is impreg- 
nable. I say it is because he is a person that gentlemen of the Republican party 
are forbidden to pass a law prohibiting his emigration into the Territories. As 
mere property, you might set up a plausible claim to exclude him. Ay, as mere 
property, there would be a color of argument in favor of his exclusion; but as a 
person, a person held to service, a man holding a personal relation to another, a 
member of the household, a part of the family, you have no more right to exclude 
him from the privilege of going into the Territories Avith his master than you have 
tn exclude a wife from going into the Territories with her husband. The wife, too, 
by law, owes service and labor to the husband. The relation existing between hus- 
band and wife is the relation established by the laws of the States ; and the gentle- 
man from Ohio cannot say that these are laws which are local, and do not extend be- 
yond the limits of the States where they were enacted ; because the same argument 
would force him to the conclusion that it is within the power of Congress to exclude 
from a Territory a wife bound to her husband under the laws of any State, and that 
the husband cannot carry a wife occupying that relation with him into the Territo- 
ries, because the law under which that relation was established or recognized does 
not extend beyond the territory of the State in which it was enac:ed." 

I thank the gentleman for the admission, that "the slave is a man — a respon- 
sible man;" the conclusion follows of necessity, that he is entitled to all the in- 
herent rights of man, moral, mental, and physical. 

But I will. not dwell on this point. I am surprised that any one should claim 
for slavery, which, in the language of a southern judge, " is condemned by rea- 
son and the laws of nature," the same consideration and protection as the nat- 
ural and universal relation of husband and wife — the one is founded in force, 
the other in voluntary contract. It is true the husband may take his wife into 
any country, and the relationship continues, because the relationship of hus- 
band and wife is everywhere recognized and established : and I suppose the 
slaveholder may take his slave into any country where that relationship is es- 
tablished by law. But the marriage relation even is controlled by the law of 
the domicil, and not by the law of the State where the marriage was consum- 
mated. When a man moves from the State of New York into the State of 
Ohio, he is yet entitled to the services of his wife, not by virtue of the laws of 
New York, but by the laws of Ohio. In the State of New York he was enti- 
tled to the services of his wife, and, by the laws of that State, he could only be 



divorced and deprived of those services for the crime of adultery. But when 
he moves to Ohio, the wife may seek and obtain divorce for habitual drunkenness, 
extreme cruelty, willful absence for three years, and for a number of other 
causes. Should Brigham Young move into Virginia with four, six, or a dozen 
•wives, would the Virginia law prevail or the law of Utah? Clearly the law of 
Virginia. And the gentleman from Virginia would say to the man of many 
•wives : "Sir, you can have but one wife here !" The law under which the rela- 
tion vras established or recognized does not extend beyond the territory in which 
it was enacted. I think the gentleman would see the fallacy of his argument 
should Brigham reply with the gentleman's own speech : " My wives are per- 
sons, responsible persons, holding a personal relation to me : they are members 
of my household, a part of my famil}', and you have no right to exclude them 
from the privilege of coming into your State with me." What would the gen- 
tleman say ? Would he admit the force of the argument 1 Would he not rath- 
er say : " If you wished to retain your wives, you should have remained where 
polygamy is lawful : the unholy relationship cannot exist here." He might ap- 
ply the language of the Mississippi court, when speaking of the " twin relic :" 
" It is condemned by reason and the laws of nature ; it exists, and can only ex- 
ist, through municipal regulations." 

No, gentlemen, you have no legal or constitutional right to take your slaves 
into the Territories ; it is contrary to the spirit of our Government, and con- 
trary to the advice and practice of the fathers. The policy of restriction was 
their policy, and we adopt it from them. And yet, unless we will permit you 
to take your local and 'peculiar institution into all our Territories, to blast the 
soil, to banish enterprise, to corrupt their institutions, and sow the seeds of 
future discord and strife, you will dissolve the Union. In the name of the 
Constitution, you make an unconstitutional demand. In the name of liberty, 
you seek to establish slavery ; pleading for justice, you attempt to build up 
and strengthen the most gigantic iniquity the world ever saw. To vote to ex- 
tend your institution is to vote for our own banishment. In the slave States, 
northern men are in more danger of insult and outrage than in any other part 
of the world, civilized or uncivilized. I admit the necessity which slavery im- 
poses. Where slavery lives, liberty must die ; for there is an interminable 
conflict between right and wrong, freedom and slavery, God and Belial. 

Mr. Speaker, the South, which complains of oppression and wrong, has had 
the control of this Government for twenty years. It has made every depart- 
ment intensely sectional. No man could hold otBce under it for one hour un- 
less he was pro-slavery. If from the North, he was expected to abjure the 
faith of his fathers, and swear fealty to slavery ; and yet they have been op- 
pressed I This cry of southern wrong is a subterfuge under which treason has 
sought to hide its wicked designs. It has been most loudly proclaimed b}' those 
who, living upon this Government, swearing to support it, have nevertheless 
dared to plot its overthrow. The South has been the favored section under this 
Government ; it has no real cause to complain. All its rights have been care- 
fully secured ; and all our obligations to the South we have faithfully observed. 
You ask for protection to your peculiar property. You get all that the Consti- 
tution gives, and more. But the North has cause of complaint. We ask, and 
ask in vain, for protection to our persons in your slave States. Unoffending 
northern men are scourged, branded, murdered and they have no protection 
from your laws. How can men who have encouraged these things, and who now 
justify the theft, robbery, and treason in the southern States, talk of that fiction 
of fictions — southern wrongs'? How the South has been oppressed — oppressed 
with patronage and office : and whenever it has felt power slipping from its 
grasp, it has raised the howl of disunion I disunion I And we are met here 
again, and asked what we are going to do to save the Union ? Gentlemen, the 



Union is of far more importance to you than to us. We do not propose to dis- 
turb it; d'oyou? We abide by the Constitution and laws, and expect you to 
do the same. If you will, the Union is safe. 

We are called upon to compromise with slavery — to give it new guarantees. 
]f guarantees are to be given, I demand them for freedom. Now, when the 
souls of men are stirred as with the inspiration of liberty ; when Italy— long 
oppressed, down-trodden, classic Italy — has risen from her night of enthrall-^ 
ment, and, vindicating her ancient renown, has wrung from the bloody hands of 
the Hapsburgs her long-lost freedom; when the autocrat of Russia strikes from 
the limbs of his serfs the corroded fetters ; when disenthralled millions on the 
banks of the Oder, the Lena, the Volga, and the Dnieper, are singing their 
songs of deliverance, it is no time in this nation, which begun by avowing the 
sublime doctrine of man's inalienable rights— it is no time, I say, to talk of 
new guarantees to slavery. As we revere the memories of our fathers, we 
should see that their hopes of freedom are here realized, and that their blood 
was not shed in vain. The great interests of the present, and the yet greater 
interests of the future, demand of us that we stay the further aggressions of 
slavery. I will not compromise ! 

1. i will not compromise, because I have no faith that any compromise we 
could make would stand one hour longer than it ministered to slavery. The 
people have notyet forgotten— and I trust they will not soon forget— the fate of 
the Missouri compromise. Tlie treatment of Kansas, baptized in blood that she 
might be enslaved, is yet terribly fresh in their remembrance. W^e have had 
compromise after compromise, and each one was a finality. The perturbed spirit 
of slavery, we were told, was finally put to rest by the ghostly incantation of 
compromise. But hardly had the shouts of exultation died away, before the 
black gladiator stalks again into the arena, demanding new compromises. What 
security, I ask, have we that any compromise we may make will be any better 
observed'' Put it into the Constitution, you say. But the Constitution has al- 
ways been just what slavery would make it ; and to-day it is openly, vauntingly 
violated by the men who demand further concession to slavery. Slavery is that 
higher law before which compromise and Constitution are as dust. 

"2. I will not compromise, because I would not further strengthen slavery. It 
is already strong enough to endanger, if not to annihilate, this Government. In 
many of the States it has already obliterated every one of the ideas which in- 
augurated the Revolution, and made it memorable. In the free States, it has 
demoralized the sentiment of our people, both priest and politician, Church and 
State. " The trail of the serpent is over them all." 

.3. I will not compromise, finally, because slavery is a sin, an outrage against 
humanity, and an insult to God. Disguise it as you will, it is still the crowning 
iniquity, the most ghastly atrocity. Beginning in violence, it can neither be 
hallowed by time nor sanctified by law. With my consent, it shall never curse 
another foot of God's fair earth. By no vote of mine shall it ever be strength- 
ened or countenanced. You may dissolve this Union, if you can. If its exist- 
ence depends upon supporting, strengthening, and extending slavery, then the 
sooner dissolved the better. It was formed for the noble purpose of promoting 
justice and securing liberty ; and when your Union and Constitution fail to pro- 
mote these ends, they are no longer the Union and Constitution of our fathers ; 
they are no longer worthy the support of freemen. It is not the formula of 
words in our Constitution which I reverence, but the animating spirit — the guar- 
antees to freedom. 

But, Mr. Chairman, we are threatened with war, unless we yield to this new 
demand. Very well; if war must come, let it come. Peace is not the first in- 
terest of a people. Better encounter war, with all its manifold horrors, than 
suffer the sense of justice and humanity to die out of the hearts of the people. 



6 

War — fierce, bloody, and relentless war, is better than the perpetual war of des- 
potisiu, which slowly but surely drags nations down to ruin. And gentleman 
should know that the first blast of war will be the trumpet-signal of emancipa- 
tion. 

If compromise was desirable, this is not the time to thiuk of it. When the 
Constitution and laws are openly defied ; when forts and arsenals are seized by 
rebels ; wheo the flag of our country is no longer a protection to its citizens, 
but rather a target for treason, it is no time to compromise, not till treason is 
punished, our plundered property restored, and the stars and stripes planted 
again upon every fortress iu the land. Xo people ever yet bought a permanent 
peace. The hordes of Alarick returned to demand new tribute after they had 
expended the gold extorted from the fears of Rome. So, compromise now : and 
from this vantage-ground of precedent they will demand new and ever-increas- 
ing guarantees to slavery. It is full time that we met this subject like men, 
like legislators acting for the future. We may shade our eyes with our hands, 
and swear that the sun is blotted from the heavens, yet there it is ; we may 
compromise now, and tell others, and try to believe ourselves, that it is a finali- 
ty, but who does not know that the disease is yet left to spread and rankle, and 
finally to break out with deadly virulence ? 

Your concession nostrums and compromise empiricisms will never settle this 
controversy ; it is past quackery, and can only be settled in accordance with 
eternal right. To compromise now, in my judgment, is most dangerous and dis- 
graceful ; dangerous to the cause of freedom, and disgraceful to our manhood. 
Fresh from the people, with a verdict triumphantly in our favor, shall we stand 
and chaffer to know vrhether that verdict shall be executed in all its significance, 
or be canceled by compromise ? If we attempt to ignore that verdict, our party, 
like others that have gone before it, will die. If we, as men, are not strong 
enough to execute that verdict, the people will send those here who will. Great 
men may falter and fail in this trying struggle ; but I believe the cause is strong- 
er than any man or set of men ; strong enough to spare them : and they who 
were so strong and great, standing abreast with truth, may feel how weak and 
dwarfed they are fighting for the wrong. We are invited to this humiliation to 
save the Union. When Spurius Postumius, the Roman Consul, was about to 
pass under the yoke of the 8aumites, a subaltern cried to him, " Stoop and lead 
us to disgrace for our country's sake." There is an apparent sarcasm in these 
words of the Roman. But we must stoop and go under the yoke for the sake 
of slavery. For one I shall do no such thing. 

Mr. Chairman, we hear much talk here about reconstruction, that the seceding 
States may come back with new constitutional guarantees to slavery. Let no one 
deceive himself with such a fallacy. The State which really gets out of this 
Union will never return ; she digs behind her a gulf as impassable as that which 
separated Dives from Paradise. And should any get out, when they attempt to 
return they may realize the truth of the old poet : " To go to hell is easy ; but 
to come back again, that is labor, that is toil." 

What a lamentable picture, Mr. Chairman, do we now present to the world. 
Citizens are seized, scourged, murdered ; armed bands of traitors capture forts 
and arsenals ;. they fire upon our flag, and flaunt defiance in our very faces; and 
yet Government, we are told — and told, too, by northern men on this floor — 
Government is powerless ; we cannot enforce the laws. What to me is singular 
is, that these very men who now deny the power of Government to vindicate its 
laws are the men who talk loudest and longest about law and order whenever a 
fugitive, man or woman, is to be returned to slavery. Then law is a sacred 
thing, and its enforcement the highest duty ; but when law is invoked to arrest 
treason and robbery, then we are asked if we intend to resort to coercion. Is 
not coercion the essence of all government ? Not the coercion of unfeeling, in- 



tangible State organizations ; but the coercion of men who are responsible to 
the law. 

How long since our U-overnment became so feeble, so averse to force ? When 
Anthony Burns was seized in Boston, Government did not stand and hesitate. 
The Army and Navy were proffered at once ; and when, in the gray of the 
morning, he was marched down to the wharf, to be sent back to slavery, he was 
escorted by a band of soldiers. There was coercion ; Government was then 
prompt as thought — a very giant in the presence of that poor, weak negro ; to 
him it was, " fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell." The Executive of the na- 
tion was then a Mars panoplied for fight. But now, when crime is rife and trea- 
son rampant, the Executive, instead of using the power intrusted to him, to stay 
the crime and arrest the treason, looks on aghast, and suff"ers it to gather head 
and power till, finally, in utter despair, like a Dominican monk, he exclaims, 
I '' Ho ! all ye good people of the United States, let us pray I" and men that never 
thought of prayer before, responded, " Amen : let us pray." 

I will confess, I feel humiliated and disgraced in this humiliation of my coun- 
try. I lament its fallen greatness, and blush for its recreancy and shame. Our 
nation is now on trial before the nations of the earth and posterity. How it 
will pass the trying ordeal, impartial history will record. If we dai*e be true, 
relying upon justice, which is ever strong, then all will be well ; the brightest 
page of our history is yet to be written. But if, for material considerations or 
for peace, we barter away truth and right, then will history record our downfall 
and infamy, because we knew our duty and we did it not. But whether in war 
or in peace,whethcr in the Union or out of the Union, I trust that that which 
is more than Union, more than Constitution — the rights of man — will come out 
of this struggle vindicated and unimpaired. Though the clouds hang heavily 
around us, narrowing our vision, yet I have an abiding faith that beyond the 
murky cloud, in the calm, serene majesty of Omniscience, " standeth God with- 
in the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 



H. Polkinhoru, Seam Book and Job Primer, TVashington. 



t/)'L 



f 



